MPs urge students to take maths or science for better job prospects

Sixth-formers were warned to choose their university courses more carefully today amid fears that dumbed-down degrees will fail to win them jobs.

Too many arts students end up unemployed because firms do not rate their qualifications, the Commons universities committee said.

Phil Willis, chairman of the committee, said students must be far more discerning in their choice of courses and urged more to study maths and science.

The warnings come as hundreds of thousands of sixth-formers await their A-level results this month. They face record competition for places this year after almost 600,000 people applied to start degree courses, up from 540,000 last year.

The MPs warned that universities have failed to tackle fears that standards have slipped and are not consistent between different institutions.

Mr Willis told the Standard: "This is a wake-up call to every single student. We are seeing a very significant number of graduates going into unemployment. Part of that is the economic crisis but part of it is because they are doing degrees for which there is not a great deal of demand. We have in the arts, social sciences and humanities a very significant number of well qualified graduates for whom there is no employment route It's never a loss to do a degree but you have to recognise that some degrees are far more marketable than others."

He urged 18 and 19-year olds to consider "very carefully" the "economic benefits" a particular degree would bring them, as well as how much they would enjoy their subject.

"I am plugging strongly the need for students to look at science and maths because that is where there is a huge shortage," he said.

The cross-party group of MPs found that the proportion of graduates awarded a first class degree rose from 7.7per cent in 1996-97 to 13.3per cent in 2007-08. They suggested that "different levels of effort" were required to obtain similar degrees at different universities. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said: "I don't recognise the committee's description of our higher education sector."

There are also concerns that London has too many universities. A recent report from the Policy Exchange think-tank found that many of the 42 higher education institutions in London were competing for the same students and suggested that struggling universities should be allowed to go to the wall.

The Conservatives have pledged to tackle fears that GCSEs and A-levels have been dumbed down by setting up an online library of old papers to expose the decline in standards.